


when my body blows away (my soul will stay)

by glitteratiglue



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Female Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 21:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4320567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteratiglue/pseuds/glitteratiglue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day, Tasha would take a vacation to some far-off place, where she would sleep deep and long and dream of all the worlds she would visit next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when my body blows away (my soul will stay)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cosmic_llin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_llin/gifts).



“What in the universe have you been doing this time, Lieutenant?” Beverly pulled out her medical tricorder with a disapproving sigh.

Tasha inched up the sleeve of her uniform top to reveal a deep gash with bruised, purplish skin surrounding it.

“An encounter with a few lively Klingons on the holodeck,” she said easily.

Beverly winced. “Don't tell me they - “

“No, I flipped my weapon the wrong way and accidentally sliced through my own arm.” Tasha had gotten better at lying over the years, but it came out less smoothly than she had hoped. “I prefer to use a real bat'leth even on the holodeck; it's something about the weight and balance.”

“Hold still,” said Beverly, cupping a hand around Tasha's elbow and bending and stretching the joint. “ _Sorry,”_  she said when Tasha gasped at the pain, and there was gentleness and warmth in her eyes beyond any clinical obligations. “It's not broken. That's good news. Just a surface wound. We'll have you fixed up in no time, Lieutenant Yar.”

Tasha breathed a sigh of relief. She didn't need anyone to know that sometimes, she ran her calisthenics programs with the safety protocols overriden – just like they didn't need to know how close it had been tonight. She'd been stupid, overconfident in setting the level too high, and if she hadn't rolled out of the way in time – well, that didn't bear thinking about.

Taking stupid risks like that wasn't part of her remit as security chief, but it was the only way she knew to prove to herself that she was quick enough, smart enough, strong enough for the job. Tasha Yar had got herself the role with hubris and non-existent nerves of steel (her hands still shook sometimes when she held her phaser), and the way she saw it, it was her own fault that she still woke in the night, terrified that one day someone would see she wasn't up to this – that she was too small, too damaged, too _afraid_ to have the responsibility of keeping the entire ship safe. So Tasha tested herself, and each time it took that little bit more - a higher level, a stronger opponent, a tougher challenge - to quiet the roaring doubts in her mind.

“Lie down,” said Beverly, with a touch of Tasha's shoulder, and then came the welcome hiss of the painkilling hypo against her neck.

Tasha lay flat on the biobed and Beverly fixed her arm while regaling her with an amusing anecdote about a mishap at an academy dance recital. It was classic doctor-patient misdirection to distract her from the stinging burn of the dermal repair, but when she closed her eyes it felt a little bit like home, to have someone taking care of her.

She never had a home, not really - not on that godforsaken rock -  but the kindness of Beverly's words sparked distorted images in her mind – no doubt pain-med induced – of the mother she could barely remember. Tasha had been six around the time things got really bad, when a failed coup had left the citizens of her planet in jeopardy and splinter groups had begun to arm themselves. Her parents had died that same year from a random act of terrorism - a bombing; it wasn't personal. Their faces never came to her anymore, but she could recall sensations: laughter, smiles, a warm hand in hers.

The climate-controlled room was suddenly cold, and she shivered. Tasha shut her eyes and kept her frame locked stiffly, focusing on the doctor's chatter.

“You need to stop this, Tasha,” Beverly said later when she was ready to discharge her, and the look on her face was knowing. “You're worth more than that. The only person you need to prove yourself to is you."

“That's part of the problem." Tasha shook her head, ashamed.

Beverly put a small, delicate hand on Tasha's shoulder, and her eyes were soft as they looked upon her. “ _You_ know you're good enough. Start there.”

 

* * *

 

“Tasha, the passageway's clear ahead!” Will Riker shouted over the hum of the generators in the tunnel. He stumbled towards her, coughing out a mouthful of dust, and his jaw was set when he told her “No life signs. All dead.”

Tasha nodded dispassionately, mentally keeping check of her security personnel patrolling the perimeter:  _one, west, two, north, three, south, four, east - five, me._ Her hand was on her phaser, clammy and trembling, while she counted again and again, white noise to drown out the despair that was trying to find its way into her mind.

The mission was supposed to be a routine geological survey: nobody could have known about the gas pockets - set into the rock like evil seams of dynamite, hidden from their sensors due to a planetary magnetic field - that exploded on contact. The reports coming in from her team indicated at least forty colonists dead, with another twelve injured and seven unnaccounted for.

Beverly and her team had set up a makeshift medical bay, working feverishly over the screams and thrashing of the injured, and Tasha could only watch and help Will and Data clear debris from a second tunnel (there was no-one alive in that one, either).

The whole place smelled of death and blood and burned flesh and Tasha wanted to scream, and instead she kept her slippery, sweaty hand stuck to her phaser. She moved rocks and checked numbers and evaluated risks and tried to sound competent and calm whenever the captain checked in over the comlink.

Later, after another mini-explosion claimed one of her team, Ensign Valiiz, Tasha stood over her lifeless body in sickbay, quiet and still. Her hands were cold, and she felt the sharpness of ice inside her, the way she'd always felt during those harsh winters on her home planet. She thought of Ishara, of hiding in the tunnels together, desperately trying to keep warm while the rival factions played their power games on the surface. Their crude shelter was only as good as their silence, so when the soldiers stomped overhead with their boots, it was Tasha who kept a hand clamped on her sister's mouth so she wouldn't scream.

She wasn't there anymore; she was back on her ship, and it was safe here – _warm –_ but Tasha knew that everywhere was safe, until it wasn't. Her legs buckled and she fell, and somewhere in her consciousness she sensed Beverly at her side, reaching for her before she hit the floor. 

Coming back to herself, Tasha registered that she was lying on one of the curtained-off biobeds, the lights were dimmer –  _was it night-time already on the ship? –_  and she was so, so tired and dusty and achy.

“She wasn't the first officer you've lost,” observed Beverly shrewdly, stroking Tasha's arm gently as if it was the most casual conversation in the world.

“She was braver than me,” Tasha spat back, an earnest anger in her eyes, “and she didn't even damn well live to prove it.”

Calmly, Beverly unwrapped a blanket, put it around Tasha's shoulders, and said, “Valiiz was a Starfleet officer. She was as brave as anyone could be, including you.”

“My younger sister,” Tasha admitted, her chest tight with anxiety. “She was braver than me. She was willing to stay and fight for something better, and I left her there.” The blanket was warm and fleecy, and she pulled it tighter around her, afraid to look anywhere but at her trembling knees.

“You were brave enough to leave,” said Beverly after a while, and Tasha didn't look at her, but she reached for her hand and held it.

 

* * *

 

“What do you suppose this one is?” Tasha muttered under her breath, indicating the spiky orange vegetable on her fork that by all accounts tasted like a sewer on a hot July afternoon. “I can hardly see in this light.” The throne room was lit with pinprick lights in a greenish hue, giving the place an oddly ghoulish air, but soft music was playing and their hosts had been accommodating under the circumstances.

Beverly smothered a laugh with her napkin, while Deanna gingerly chewed and swallowed another mouthful of the dish, forcing a smile onto her face when she saw the Dalvonian leader scrutinising her intently.

“It's very good,” Deanna said brightly; the reply she got was stone-faced, but that wasn't unexpected: her research on the Dalvonians had revealed they weren't a particularly expressive race.

“An unusually potent flavour,” Tasha added, a wicked grin on her face, and regretted it immediately when Deanna kicked her sharply under the table.

“They're a sensitive bunch,” the counselor whispered. “Dalvonian culture has little room for jokes, and even less room for waste. We have to eat it all, or they will take great offence. It could cause a diplomatic incident.”

“Really?” Beverly raised an eyebrow, pushing her dinner round her plate with a sigh.

“I don't know.” Deanna stabbed another slice with her fork, her expression troubled. “He's holding something back. I'm worried.”

Tasha's skin felt cold, and a shiver passed over the back of her neck. She started going through escape plans and security contingencies in her head, just in case.

Aside from their curious social customs, Dalvon had provided very little information upon its application to be a Federation member word, and something about that had set alarm bells ringing for Tasha. She had accepted the formal dinner invite with their leader, wanting to develop her skills at diplomatic first contact, and as the Dalvonians historically responded better to women in authority than men, she had brought Deanna and Beverly along. Her security staff were in position just outside the residence – a sensible precaution if nothing else.

It didn't happen when she expected – after the dinner, when everyone would have their guard down – instead, it came before the dessert course was served.

There was a blinding flash of light – a makeshift disruptor, if she wasn't mistaken – then Tasha was yelling  _“get down!”_ and looking for Beverly and Deanna to drag them to the floor.

Tasha stunned two of the guards with one carefully-aimed phaser burst and whirled round to find Deanna had one in a mok'bara hold with a phaser held against his neck.

She was momentarily surprised enough not to notice the leader coming out from behind a pillar with his disrupter held aloft.

“Drop it,” said the high, cold voice.

Tasha's heart pounded, and she let the phaser fall from her grasp, cursing herself for being so stupid even in this darkness.

Then, through the gloom, she spotted Beverly, inching along under the table with cat-like stealth, until she slammed into his legs and his weapon skittered across the tiles.

Watching the doctor pin him down with her knee and press the phaser against his neck, Tasha started to laugh.

Beverly Crusher was tougher than she looked, evidently.

“We'll question that one,” said Tasha, indicating Deanna's struggling captive. She used her tricorder to override the lock on the sealed doors and the security officers came rushing in, their job already having been done for them.

It turned out to be a poorly executed plan to steal the  _Enterprise's_ warp core – much like the Pakleds, the Dalvonians had no warp technology of their own and only possessed what they had taken by force.

After that mission, Tasha made a mental note never to underestimate any of her colleagues again.

 

* * *

 

“I was thinking about a vacation to Pacifica,” said Beverly, one night when they were sitting in her quarters drinking Samarian sunsets. These nights had become a regular thing – sometimes with Deanna, too, if she wasn't busy with her counseling duties – and were a chance for them both to put aside the day's stresses and talk frankly. They were speaking quietly so as not to wake the sleeping Wesley next door (he'd gone to bed late after staying late at the lab tending to another extra credit science project). The room was warmly lit and the scent from Beverly's numerous floral arrangements had a relaxing appeal; compared to Tasha's sparsely furnished quarters, it felt like home.

“Really? I've heard the beaches are beautiful,” Tasha said, sipping her rainbow-hued drink. Her heart quickened, because – it was silly to admit – she'd never had a vacation, never even thought about it. Vacations were for people who dreamed; she'd never slept well, waking often in the night, a habit left over from the time when she slept in shifts, brief hours snatched here and there, always half-awake and listening for any potential danger.

“The water is warm, so clear you can see all the way to the bottom, and they have over a thousand types of coral in all colours, not to mention some fascinating aquatic plant life.” Beverly's eyes glazed over happily at the thought of it, and Tasha looked away.

“Where would you go?”

Tasha had no idea how to answer that question. She fiddled with the stem of her glass, and said at last, “I don't know. I've never been anywhere, apart from missions.”

Beverly got to her feet, a wicked grin spreading across her face. “Come on.”

Tasha waited outside Holodeck Twelve, drumming her fingers on the wall impatiently while Beverly programmed it with several parameters and replicated them both swimsuits.

“I don't know if purple is really my colour,” Tasha said, deadpan.

Beverly shot her an exasperated look. “Just put it on, and trust me.”

When they were inside and the program activated, Tasha couldn't speak.

They were standing on the most pristine, golden beach that photonic technology could muster. The sand between Tasha's toes was gently warm from the sun, and just beyond where they stood, the waves were lapping on the shoreline, and rocks surrounded a small cove on one side.

It was all blue, so blue that all she could see for miles was that blue, and she wanted to wrap herself in it.

Beverly took her hand with a triumphant smile and they went into the water together.

“I can swim.” Tasha told her. “That's the one thing my mother taught me, back when she was still alive.”

That day, they swam to the distant rocks and back and dried themselves in the sun, stretched out lazily on the rocks. Tasha's hair was stiff and unruly with the saltwater, but she fluffed it with her hand and grinned, saying she liked it that way. 

On these rocks, with the sea lapping at her toes, Tasha felt safer than anywhere she had ever been in her whole life.

One day, she would take a vacation to some far-off place like that, where she would sleep deep and long and dream of all the worlds she would visit next.

 

* * *

 

Beverly took that vacation to Pacifica, without Tasha. It was more stunning than even the bewitching technicolor echo she'd created on the holodeck, and its beauty made her ache for her friend who would never see it.

There was a cold, empty space in her heart now, but Deanna was there and she understood, because she had that coldness inside her, too.

They went deep-sea diving in coral caves and watched shoals of luminescent fish whip past them in the clear water, and they drank Samarian sunsets because she'd loved them and it seemed appropriate, even if they both preferred to drink something that was a little less sweet.

Sometimes they cried, alone or together – especially at night, when it was hard to be brave in the blackness closing in around your head – but more often, they laughed, and talked of Tasha, their friend: fierce and bright and determined, spiky and quick to anger.

Beverly found the little cove from the holodeck on their last day, alone, and swam out to those familiar rocks.

 _We were all a little braver with you here,_ she thought. There was sea air in her nose, and salt water in her hair, and though she couldn't explain it, Tasha was there with her, and she could feel her.

When they beamed back to their ship that night, Beverly touched the smooth pebble in her pocket.

She would remember.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song _Home _by Ingrid Michaelson.__


End file.
